Generic guild option

[Salt Merchant]

Guild-sniffing is a problem in this game. Anyone trying to make a living based on a sub-guild alone is automatically under suspicion.

I wonder if adding a generic guild option might not help with this. All the guild would have is the basics, such as psi/barrier, the core combat skills, some ride, etc.

Just choosing merchant as a guild doesn't really do it, as this can be sniffed out too (cavilish, for example). Having a generic guild would introduce some actual doubt.

[FantasyWriter]

I would suggest sending in a special app with a skill exchange. Pick the guild
that you want, then offer a valuable skill that you are willing to do without in
exchange for a skill that would help hide your "true" nature.  eg.- An assassin
could give up hide for hunt to make people thing you had spent your whole
life hunting animals instead of people.

:evil grin:

[Marauder Moe]

I tend to consider burglar as a generic guild.

[brytta.leofa]

Every mundane skill, capped at 10%

[Desertman]

Every mundane skill, capped at 10%

I dont know about the 10% thing.

But thats actually a very interesting idea.

IRL I am not the BEST at anything that I can think of really, but I know how to do a lot of things marginally well. I can build a website, and I can raise cattle...Neither of those would seem to fit into the same "Guild", would they?

A generic guild that got a huge number of mundane skills, but all of the skills were capped relatively low but at a level that still made them moderately useful would be neat.

[Is Friday]

10% is way too low.

[FantasyWriter]

I tend to consider burglar as a generic guild.

I agree.

[NoteworthyFellow]

I tend to consider burglar as a generic guild.

I agree.

So is burglar the unsniffable guild?  I'm afraid I don't know the details here, but this could be useful when I want to avoid being guild-sniffed.

[Is Friday]

It has the broadest range of skillsets, but no, it's not "unsniffable". Nothing is.

[Malken]

I tend to consider burglar as a generic guild.

I agree.

So is burglar the unsniffable guild?  I'm afraid I don't know the details here, but this could be useful when I want to avoid being guild-sniffed.

Good luck trying to pass as a legit merchant, you're screwed the moment someone talks to you in cavilish.

If your character's job ICly involves a subclass craft, and people realize that you can't speak cavilish, you're automatically suspicious to them.

The best roleplayers out there will only be vaguely suspicious of you, ICly.

[a strange shadow]

I still don't get why cavilish isn't a subguild option. It is such an easy, easy solution.

[Ammut]

AFAIK in Arm 2.0 this won't be a problem anymore and we will be able to choose our own skill mixes to custom create characters.

I really doubt that adding another guild would solve anything.  I also really don't care if people try to "guild sniff" me.  I do that too, it's
part of the current game and isn't going to be solved with something as simple as a generic guild.  Wouldn't people just "sniff" that
out as well?

Perhaps I'm failing to see why there is a need for a new, generic-skill guild.  Is it because there are mean people out that who pick on
poor merchants that are trying to hide they are merchants? Or is it because you want a certain range of skills to go along with your
sub-guild choice which will allow you to use the sub-guild better?

[Lizzie]

Ammit, It's more like, they know you are NOT an actual merchant, but that rather, you only have a couple of crafting skills and are secretly something ELSE entirely..and will -never- have the ability to max your crafting skill and will therefore -never- be allowed to submit custom designs...and furthermore, whatever you REALLY are (your main guild), you are hiding it from me, which means you're lying, which means I shouldn't hire you, OR I should push to get you to admit that you're actually a burglar/assassin/defiler/mindbender or other thing that you don't want anyone knowing about.

If you don't know Cavilish, you -cannot- pass yourself off as a merchant, because the merchant class comes with Cavilish, and this is known and documented information. You -should- be able to explain it away ICly. But OOCly, no one will believe it, and when people know things OOCly, it -can- affect how they RP things. It doesn't mean it will affect it, but it can, and it does, with some people.

This is pertinent with anything you want to do. If you say you are a physician, well everyone knows that isn't a main guild, it's a subguild. So that means everyone ALSO knows that you are pretending to be your subguild, and hiding your main guild. And that immediately puts you on the suspect list of possible mindbender/defiler/assassin/burglar again.

Whenever you pick a subguild to "be" whatever you want your character to pretend to be, while pretending -not- to "be" whatever guild your character is..you run the risk of that OOC knowledge of the other player getting in the way of their character actually believing your story. Because everyone knows, that it makes zero sense at all, for someone to ONLY know how to sew cloth, and have no other skills of any sort besides contact and psi. They KNOW that you can do something else. In real life, can you ONLY type, and do nothing else? Are you not capable of driving a car? Or riding a bike? Or rollerskating maybe? Or perhaps you have the reading skill? Or maybe you know Korean. Maybe you know how to make paper airplanes, or operate a remote-control car. Have you never done a paint-by-numbers before in your life, or drawn with crayons? Is it truly possible for someone to only have ONE skill? No, of course not. So when your character pretends that all he knows how to do is bandage and make cure tablets, no one is gonna believe him. Not ICly, not OOCly.

When you use your subguilt instead of your main guild to explain your charcter's abilities, you will be sniffed. There's no way around it. Not everyone will try. But it won't be that hard to figure out, even if they're not trying.

[Fathi]

Lizzie makes some good points. Another and more oft-overlooked aspect of guild sniffing is the expectation that you do everything associated with your guild, generally from an employer.

For example, I once made a character who was a ranger. Now, I made this character a ranger because the ranger skillset fit her background/personality, but she was by no means a hardcore wilderness survivalist who knew how to use every skill that came with the ranger package.

I made it very clear through my RP of the character that there were some things she had no idea how to do... but the second she was pegged as a ranger, she was expected to do them, even though a few of the skills in question had little bearing on her occupation and she was given no IC training on how to do these things. It was very frustrating because I got the distinct sense that nobody was listening when my character said she was cluelessly bad at some things and needed help. And to me, at least, it would have seemed borderline shitty RP to just suddenly be passably good at these things just because she came with the skills.

[Shiroi Tsuki]

A lot of these reasons are why I'm looking forward to 2.Arm, in which there will be a lot more mixed-guild options.

[FantasyWriter]

I tend to consider burglar as a generic guild.

I agree.

So is burglar the unsniffable guild?  I'm afraid I don't know the details here, but this could be useful when I want to avoid being guild-sniffed.

Good luck trying to pass as a legit merchant, you're screwed the moment someone talks to you in cavilish.

If your character's job ICly involves a subclass craft, and people realize that you can't speak cavilish, you're automatically suspicious to them.

The best roleplayers out there will only be vaguely suspicious of you, ICly.

You could always special app burglar/crafter and ask for Cavalish with the intent of making people believe you are not what you are,but be sure to write a good reason into your background as to how and why your character learned Cavalish.

[Marauder Moe]

My burglars have never picked locks.

If I ever play another merchant in Arm 1.0 I will ask to have my Cavilish removed.

You can't fake being a crafter, but a merchant is just someone who sells stuff.

Also, I still strongly believe that there needs to be a subguild with Cavilish.

[Shiroi Tsuki]

The 'merchant' name of the merchant class IS pretty out of place.  But I can't imagine what else you would call it.  The 'crafting' class seems kind of... misconstrued.

Maybe the 'artisan' class?  Not that I expect this to change for our current game.

[FantasyWriter]

The 'merchant' name of the merchant class IS pretty out of place.  But I can't imagine what else you would call it.  The 'crafting' class seems kind of... misconstrued.

Maybe the 'artisan' class?  Not that I expect this to change for our current game.

I have heard horror stories about the merchant class before the crating code was implemented.  Makes me very glad that I wasn't around then, lol.

[Thunkkin]

The 'merchant' name of the merchant class IS pretty out of place.  But I can't imagine what else you would call it.  The 'crafting' class seems kind of... misconstrued.

Maybe the 'artisan' class?  Not that I expect this to change for our current game.

I have to say, from some random comments I've read, I find the whole crafting-merchant thing baffling.  Why would being able to speak cavilish and make good deals affect how good you would be at designing and executing the craftsmanship of high-quality jewelry, or clothing, or what have you?

I've known plenty of people who do clothing and jewelry design in real life - some of them were terrible with money and didn't speak foreign languages, but that didn't seem to hinder their artistic design abilities.  Obviously, it's just a quirk of the game, but I never in a million years would have guessed that if I wanted to create a true artisan, I'd have to pick a class that doesn't seem to have much to do with it.

Oh well, at least I know now before ever trying it.  But the idea that someone who is merchant/acrobat would end up a better jewelcrafter than someone who is burglar/jewelcrafter is ... boggling.  At least, if I'm reading this thread correctly.

[jhunter]

Never really had a problem with "guild-sniffing" that I can remember. I normally don't care if someone did anyway. Most Arm players are good enough roleplayers that they don't allow that OOC knowledge to affect their character's IC decisions. That I've seen anyway.

[LoD]

Guild sniffing will definitely be harder to accomplish in Armageddon 2.0, but one of the problems in the current iteration is that it's propagated by both sides -- employer and employee.

Taken from another thread:

The problem that employers have is several players are trying to pass off their character as one thing while being another.  This becomes frustrating and problematic for the employer, because of discussions that go like this:

Employer: So, you want to join the House?
Hire: Yes.
Employer: Well, how do you think you'd be able to serve?
Hire: I can do whatever you want me to do.
Employer: Sure, but what have you done in the past - what are you good at?
Hire: Little bit of this, little bit of that really.
Employer: Well, do you have any experience in a specific area?
Hire: Well, mostly I've just done odd jobs for a few folks here and there.
Employer: What kind of odd jobs?
Hire: Oh, just run of the mill work.

This is infuriating to employers that simply want to know how they can use you in the organization.  It's not too much to ask to at least be realistic when describing your strengths and weaknesses.  You don't have to say, "I'm an assassin!" -- but you should at least indicate whether you know the sharp end of a sword, would be of ANY use standing watch on a caravan, or know how to make a table.  You wouldn't walk into an interview today and expect to get hired with those kinds of dodgy answers to pointed questions, so why would you expect it to work in the game?

Employers often develop guild-sniffing techniques ICly because potential employees develop guild-obscuring techniques ICly.  I realize that people don't want the environment to be as watered down as, "I'm a Burglar." or "I'm a Merchant." -- but when players consistently dodge answers about what their character knows or has experience in, especially as a potential employee, it forces the employer to be more critical and pointed in their line of questioning.

What I think is challenging for many players is knowing someone's guild and accepting their response when they either honestly or dishonestly claim not to be able to do something you (the player) assumes they can do.  For example, you might have determined that someone is an assassin guild and so, from your previous experience with assassins, you ask whether they can taint a few blades for you.  They then claim that they have no idea how that might be done.  I've witnessed some employers that would actually then force their employees to perform the action or to do jobs that are inherent to their class rather than to the character.

Those are the type of people that perpetuate the problem, but it's often a phase players often go through as they move from admiring and chasing coded skill/ability/power and slowly migrate toward admiring and savoring a good role or story.  The two aren't mutually exclusive, but more often than not there's a fairly linear transition, especially amongst players that come directly from hack'n'slash games and are rewarded almost exclusively on their coded merits.

I don't think a generic class is really necessary for Arm 1.0, especially if the main benefit/reason for development is to combat guild sniffing.  Arm 2.0 sounds like it has a lot of features that will make it more difficult to guild sniff, but some of the responsibility will still remain on the shoulders of the players and their subsequent behavior to lessen the need for guild sniffing techniques that can often be as IC as people perceive them to be OOC.

-LoD

[Delstro]

I hope it is really not that bad Lizzie. Seriously I hope.

[mansa]

Sniffing Guilds smell bad

[Shiroi Tsuki]

For example, you might have determined that someone is an assassin guild and so, from your previous experience with assassins, you ask whether they can taint a few blades for you.  They then claim that they have no idea how that might be done.

What's funny about this is that just because someone IS a guild assassin doesn't mean that they're going to know how to taint blades anyway.  I've had two of them, and I never tried to taint a single thing.  Wouldn't even know the syntax for it or what can be used.  A good point to be made is that just because someone has the skill doesn't mean the character knows how to use it, and just because someone has a skill doesn't mean the PLAYER necessarily knows how to use it.

The only time I have found guild sniffing to be effective as an employer is if you're looking for a merchant guild specifically.  Anyone can claim they know how to fight, anyone can claim they know how to hunt, a character can make any claims as to their background that they want to.  Hell, they might be lying ICly to get the job, or maybe in their fuzzy background there character might have done those things, but not necessarily done it well.  Will the employer figure out eventually that their hired 'guard' is absolutely useless in combat?  Sure.

At the same time, I still wish guild sniffing was harder to do.  If you're around anyone for a while, you're going to be able to figure out what they're capable of.  And sometimes all it takes is a slip of the fingers to accidentally peek someone in public, and whoops, suddenly the pickpocket you've disguised as a hunter all this time is definitely outed.  That at least is kind of discouraging.  At the same time I and a whole bunch of others here do our damnedest to roleplay our characters as actual people instead of walking skillsets, and we can only hope to lead by example.